Talk about built-in irony: the class of tricky words known as “contronyms” can mean the opposite of what you think they mean.
I Sanction This
Emily Dickinson, Harvard-Bound
Seth Perlow examines how Harvard claims the rights to Emily Dickinson's poems, a body of work that was unpublished when she died, more than 130 years ago.
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Hardly Working
Why is it okay to say “I’m working on a novel” but not okay to say “I’m working on my novel”? The former is a normal, straightforward, expression, while the latter smacks of arrogance and self-absorption. At Bookforum, Jesse Barron writes about the oddity of Working on My Novel, a collection of retweets (you read that correctly) of writers telling the world about their labors. It might also be a good time to read Dominic Smith on the number of novelists at work in America. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
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Stars and Bodies
Recommended listening: David Naimon interviews Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star, about “anorexia and astronomy, stars and bodies.” Pair with Alex Norcia‘s Millions review of Gerard’s novel here.
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Jane Austen in New York
At the Morgan Library in NYC: “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen‘s Life and Legacy.” Read the NY Times review of the show here. And, if your hankering for eighteenth and early nineteenth century English art isn’t sated by the Austen, the Morgan is also offering “William Blake‘s World: ‘A New Heaven Is Begun'”.
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Michel Houellebecq on the Art of Fiction
Susannah Hunnewell interviews Michel Houellebecq, France’s controversial literary icon, for The Paris Review’s “The Art of Fiction” series: “There is a need for intensity. From time to time, you have to forsake harmony. You even have to forsake truth. You have to, when you need to, energetically embrace excessive things.”
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